Known methods for harnessing the vast pool of data present on the Internet include approaches to create static website connection maps (Opte) (http://opte.org/), mapping blogging content (“Data Mining: Mapping the Blogosphere”, http://datamining.typepad.com/gallery/blog-map-gallery.html, visualizations of related music (LivePlasma, http://www.liveplasma.com/, which suggests music for the user to listen to), and mapping of related Wikipedia page links (WikiMindMap, http://www.wikimindmap.org/).
Content aggregating websites that find content and export a linear list of hyperlinks to the user are known. Examples include search engines, e.g., Google, Bing, Yahoo Search, etc., as well as portals that display news articles aggregated from various Internet sources, e.g., Google News, Yahoo News, etc. This approach has also been extended to portals that display user-generated content, e.g., Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Notwithstanding the foregoing known methods, improved and/or alternative methods and apparatus for accessing and managing data that is available either on the Internet or on mass storage devices such as hard-drives, data-servers, or other mass storage devices connected to a computer display terminal remain desirable.